Summary

Kakashi and Iruka wake up hungover in a hotel room together and discover that they'd made some terrible decisions that forever change their lives.

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There are too many broken pieces of him for someone to hold; too much ugliness, and too many scars, and too much blood on his skin that he’ll never be able to wash off. Kakashi doesn’t know what it would even mean to love someone, or to be loved like he’s read in these kind of books. He’s only ever glimpsed what it might feel like in passing, in the looks Minato-sensei and Kushina-san exchanged with one another when they were still alive, and in the way their shadows held hands as they walked down the street together at night. In the smiles and in the laughter of families that live in the light, who don’t smell of dirt and blood and the decay that is the smell of men like him who go to war in the night.

Love was never meant for men like him, who don’t even know what it means to be alive.

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Part 1 of this fic has been completed and posted. We are now on hiatus to finish Part 2, which will be posted soon.